Interactive voice response (IVR) systems are answering machines that can interact with a caller and provide information 24 hours a day. Interactive voice response systems have found particular favor with large corporations that engage in large numbers of telephone transactions that involve disseminating essentially the same types of information to each caller. These systems can be updated frequently and automatically.
The technology employed by interactive voice response systems is often not economical for small institutions that do not maintain a high volume of telephone calls seeking a particular type of information. One example is a school or a university that seeks to use interactive voice response systems to report grades to their students. Reporting grades by telephone is extremely convenient for students. Students usually leave their campus at the end of each semester or quarter as quickly as possible--and often before professors have graded their final exams and reported them to their respective schools and universities. Telephone grade reporting allows students to know their grades without having to physically review posted grade sheets at the university or to wait, perhaps for months, for the university to mail the grades.
A problem that schools and universities encounter in using interactive voice response systems is how infrequently they are used intensively. Students need to find their grades by telephone only at the end of a quarter or semester. This message traffic can be quite heavy, but only for a few weeks of the year, schools and universities make no other use of their interactive voice response systems. The interactive voice response system still must be robust enough to support a high volume of phone calls. The equipment required to be purchased by a school or university to conduct grade reporting using interactive voice response system is therefore high. Furthermore, the interactive voice response industry is prone to rapid technological improvements such that interactive voice response systems quickly become obsolete.
Considerable economies of scale can be realized by combining the grade reporting requirements of several schools using a single set of interactive voice response equipment. However, different schools and universities often have automated grade reporting systems that are incompatible with each other as well as with interactive voice response systems. This system incompatibility presents a major problem in realizing significant economies of each scale since different schools and universities cannot share the use of the same interactive voice response equipment without extensive and expensive modifications.
It is known that the ability to target particular advertisements and offers to those consumers who are most apt to be interested in receiving such messages have great value to advertisers and marketers. Advertisers and marketers are often willing to pay a premium to reach consumers with advertisements and offers that are directed to their individual anticipated needs and interests. Direct advertisers and marketers have learned that consumers share particular attributes and often have comparable needs and interests based on certain demographic variables. Even more important, advertisers and marketers are willing to pay to have their offers and advertisements directed to the individuals who are most receptive.
It is a part of the present invention to recognize that the well known predispositions of advertisers and marketers to pay for well directed advertisements and offers can be used to offset the costs associated with providing interactive voice response systems to institutions, such as schools and universities, who use such systems intensively but infrequently. The advertisements and offers from multiple sponsors can be pooled at a common ADs server. Likewise, grades from a number of different schools can be mapped into a common format that is suitable for use by interactive voice response equipment. In addition to grades, other demographic and sociological indications (collectively herein referred to as "attributes") can be supplied in addition to the grades. These student attributes can then be utilized to direct advertisements and offers to particular students. The advertising and offering process can be enhanced over time by using information derived from some students to enhance the advertisements and offers played to later students.
Further economies of scale can be realized by employing a single set of interactive voice response systems which can then be recycled among a number of different schools. In this way, individual schools are freed of the necessity to purchase their own interactive voice response equipment while advertisers and marketers are permitted access to the tastes and interests of individual students. Hence, schools, universities, and even individuals can offer interactive voice response technology where such offerings previously would not have been economically feasible.
One advantage of interactive voice response systems is that they can deliver information that consumers desire at any time and at low cost. Reporting course grades to students is only one example of the capability of the technology; each student desiring to know his or her grades for a semester can call a toll-free number that is connected to the interactive voice response system. Utilizing passwords or other forms of identification, the information can be delivered to a particular student quickly and with confidentiality. Students appreciate the ability to learn their grades from a remote location in advance of a formal grade report. Students and other consumers often do not object to having advertisers and marketers pay the cost of being able to access their grades. Indeed, students often enjoy the often creative advertisements and offers for products and services. Other forms of information dissemination in addition to grade reporting are also possible.
The ability to target particular advertisements and offers to those consumers who are apt to be interested in the messages has great value to advertisers and marketers. Advertisers and marketers are often willing to pay a premium to reach these consumers with advertisements and offers that are directed to their anticipated needs and interests. Direct advertisers and marketers have learned that consumers that share particular attributes often have comparable needs and interests. Even more important, interactive voice response equipment allows advertisers and marketers to adapt their messages to consumers. The revenue that these advertisers and marketers can be expected to be willing to pay could be used to offset the cost of disseminating information.
There is a need in the art to establish a way to direct advertising (the spoken word) and offers (the taking of orders) (herein collectively referred to as "advertising messages") to consumers using interactive voice response systems to particular target markets e.g., those individuals who are or are most likely to be most receptive to the information. There is also a need for a way to defer the expenses associated with interactive voice response systems. Among the objectives of the present invention are to solve these two problems. It is a further objective of the present invention to solve these problems together. It is also an objective of the present invention to start with a database of information about various consumer characteristics, demographic and other characteristics and to direct advertising messages to these consumers based on these known attributes. The present invention also rewards vendors of goods or services for disseminating information, while allowing these vendors to direct their advertisements to those consumers whom they believe are most apt to have an interest in their products or services. It is also an objective of the present invention to convey information and advertising messages to consumers based on information that is already known about the consumer.
The present invention achieves these objectives, and others, by applying a database having information which the consumer desires to know, a database containing attributes of the consumer, and a database of advertisements that an interactive voice response system can deliver to a the consumer. The database of consumer attributes can contain information that is already known about the consumer. The consumer initiates activity by calling the interactive voice response system. Software identifies the consumer via the consumer inputted identification and plays an advertising message that, preferably, has been predetermined to have likely appeal to the consumer. The interactive voice response system is then used to disseminate the information sought by the customer (such as student grades) after first disseminating the advertising message.
The present invention has the particular advantage of individuals, schools and universities to disseminate grade information using interactive voice response technology which otherwise may be too expensive to maintain. Advertisers and marketers wanting to target advertising messages to the consumer using the interactive voice response system pay part or all of the cost of reporting the student's grades. The ability of advertisers and marketers to better direct advertisements to those customers who are most interested in the product or service being sold has great value to advertisers and marketers. Similarly consumers benefit because they perceive value in receiving advertisements or offers for the products or services which they may reasonably be expected to have an interest in purchasing. And consumers can avoid the advertising messages entirely simply by not calling.
One particularly efficient application of the present invention is in distributing grade reports to students. Students generally want to know their grades promptly at the end of every semester. Universities have the problems and costs associated with getting this information to students. Interactive voice response systems are a natural vehicle for disseminating grade information. Universities know many attributes of their students that have value to advertisers and marketers. For example, a university will know the sex, age, year in school, major course of study, address and additional attributes. Advertisers and marketers can direct advertising messages to students based on these known attributes without knowing the true identity of the person. For example, a consumer electronics company can market to engineering majors only, by advertising the price or opportunity to order, a specialized engineering calculator. Also, female oriented products can be marketed to females only. Advertising revenues can be used to offset the price of disseminating the grade reports.
The features necessary to implement the present invention include a database of attributes of particular individuals. Attributes can be supplied by the schools and mapped into a database so that the identity, and privacy, of the student is never known to an individual advertiser. The consumer can be assigned a password or similar identification which identifies his or her attributes. The consumers attributes, however derived, must then be used to quickly and accurately select an advertisement of interest to the individual consumer. The sorting process needs to be flexible so as to accommodate the different interests of particular advertisers and marketers fast enough that consumers are not annoyed by any delay. One way of achieving this objective is to determine in advance of a call which advertising message to play, and in what order to play multiple messages, based on the consumer's known attributes.
It is advantageous to maintain a record of the attributes of consumers who access a particular database so that advertisers and marketers have assurance that their advertising messages are being targeted to those consumers who are most apt to have an interest in the particular goods or services. It is also advantageous to record how many times a particular advertising message meets the desired target audience. These advantages are easily obtained with the present invention by maintaining a network between the interactive voice response equipment and a separate server that stores which advertising message to play and then transmits its instructions.
The foregoing objectives, features and advantages of the present invention, and others in addition, are illustrated below with the aid of the drawings and detailed description.